Folding chairs are in wide use. One popular use for a folding chair is the rental or hire market. Such chairs are used by businesses that rent chairs for quick deployment and collection, at functions where chairs would not otherwise be present. Traditional folding chairs are wooden although plastic folding chairs are known. Particularly for the rental or hire market, folding chairs must be sturdy and capable of absorbing abusive handling. Further, the chairs must be stackable so they may be stored and transported economically. It is also preferred that stacks of chairs be susceptible to greater rather than lesser heights during storage and transport. It is important that chairs do not slide off their stack as this can result to inconvenience and injury.
One such folding plastic chair shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,099,073. Note that this type of folding chair fails to precisely resemble traditional wooden folding chairs because of the presence of prominent special molded-in features. Further, it is known that people will tend to rock on this type of chair and that when doing so, excessive stresses are placed on, particularly, the rear legs. This can result in deformation, damage or breakage to the chair. Accordingly, the useful lifetime of the chair is reduced and therefore the profitability of the rental business is reduced. Some plastic chairs are uncomfortable.
Another type of plastic folding chair is seen in U.S. Pat. No. 6,592,182. This type of chair has no metal reinforcement in the seat or along the legs. As mentioned above, rocking on this type of chair can result in excessive stresses, for example, on the rear legs.